Small Business Saturdays

I’ve learned that creatives usually only have one or two gifts.

For example, I’m a word-junkie. I like to squeeze the goodness out of words and phrases, massage a passage till it shines. BUT. I am not a photographer, painter or dancer. My clay class in high school taught me that I can’t throw, so I stick with what I know!

Which is why, for the next 15 days, I want to collaborate with you and other creatives–photographers, artists, designers, welders and all those in between. For 15 minutes, I want to sit with your words and leave you with a few fresh ideas for FREE. My hope is to see new friendships, partnerships and other ships can set sail from this idea and leave us all feeling a new kind of inspired.

How it works

Contact me sometime in the next 15 days saying you want a “Free 15.” I will draw one person each day. If you win, I sit with your website (or even just a specific page of your choosing) and then send you grammatical advice, word-changes and flow ideas. Completely free.

All I ask for is, if you like my work, spread the word. Social media love via Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest is all appreciated!

Looking forward to these next 15!

It’s hard for me to believe sometimes that I took (and did quite well) in Advanced Grammar while in undergrad. Because when it comes to my own writing, I break rules like its my job. (*cough* starting a dependent clause with because)

Because let’s be real. Grammar is not cool. It was basically invented by old Puritan bossy-butts that couldn’t stand the thought of words running bare and free. Now as you picture naked letters running Sound-of-Music-style through the hills, remember, you like structure. You need structure. I do too.

Without structure, we would be forced to read like some people talk. Without rules we wouldn’t have any rules to break! So as much as I want to hate on them, I know that grammar aint all that bad.

8 of the Basics

1. Where Do I Use Commas?: One day a young duffer sneezed and sprayed tiny ink blots all over his hand-scrawled journal and thought, “Hmm, tis a lovely little speck.” Since then we’ve had the comma, and it’s really been a bugger.

2. Quotations & Punctuation: Quotations and punctuation are a bit like frenemies. You’ve got to know exactly how much space to give ’em.

3. Capitalizing Titles: As with skinning cats, there is more than one way to capitalize a title. Pick one and stick with it.

4. 10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling: True or false, I misspelled misspelling the first time I typed it.

5. Apostrophes: These possessive little devils leave us looking silly when we use them wrong.

6. Dashes: Em- or en-. Dashes, dashes we all fall down.

7. 30 Words That Don’t Need Hyphens: Hi, I’m Megan, and I’m a hypen- addict.

8. Colons vs. Semicolons:

And now that you’re officially geeked-out on grammar, let’s just keep it real and remember that the grammar police really are not the best writers out there anyways.